(April 25th, 1987)

Not for the first time - and probably not for the last - I wondered why I'd agreed to this…torture.

The pragmatic, reasonable and completely truthful answer came to me right away, of course: Because going through this would not only improve my skills and physical fitness, it would prove to Scotland Yard that I was ready to help Ben in the field again, in an official capacity.

The purely emotional and not entirely logical reason came to me a moment later, as I landed hard on my back with a grunt and all the wind was knocked out of me: Because I was never going to be completely unprepared for a fight again.

A little over a year ago, my half-sister Brenna had challenged me to a fight, and had beaten me so badly that the resulting physical therapy had taken months. There were still occasionally days when my right knee was so stiff and sore that I ended up putting most of my weight on my cane…but they were a lot less frequent than they had been, and I'd managed to regain the vast majority of my mobility. The psychological therapy and mental healing had lasted until March of this year, but had left me with less visible scars. And I had to pass a final psychological exam. That was going to be fun.

Oh, sure, I still had the occasional minor anger management problem…but lots of people contended with worse every day. And it was nothing at all compared to the several-times-a-day emotional breakdowns I'd had during the first couple of months after Brenna had hit me with whatever that piece of Sidhe mind-magic had been.

"Son of a…" I rolled to my feet, grasping my cane in my left hand and starting to circle again. The Scotland Yard Special Magical Response trainer I was sparring with - a middle aged combat Mage named Sergeant Riley Malone - grinned at me in response. His black hair, just starting to show hints of silver in it, wasn't even mussed. I was under the impression from Ben that Malone had seen service during the second World War.

"Come on, girl," he called mockingly, brown eyes twinkling with obvious mischief, "What's wrong? Did you take slow pills this morning or something?"

I growled and struggled to keep control of my temper. Four solid months of lessons with Malone - three days a week for at least four hours at a time - had toughened me up in a lot of ways. I was stronger, faster and more flexible than I had been before my injuries, and my cane had become more of an affectation than a crutch.

Of course, it was still a powerful magical tool, even more so than my old staff, which Brenna had destroyed. I gathered Anima into it and thrust it towards him, focusing on the image of a bolt of lightning. I’d been working with Hollis on silent casting over the past year, and my proficiency had grown by leaps and bounds, to the point where I could cast many spells without needing a verbal focus.

The snow leopard-shaped head of my cane crackled with visible static for an instant before the brilliant blue-white bolt leaped out towards him.

There were only two rules to these practice duels: First, no fire. It was simply too dangerous and hard to control in a confined space. Second, lightning needed to be kept below lethal voltages. My lightning bolt was about as powerful as a police-issued ‘Stun Gun’ Magearm pistol…just enough to knock someone off their feet and temporarily immobilize them.

He dodged out of its way and sprinted across the mats towards me, closing in before I could throw another spell. There’s magic you can use to make a bolt of lightning ground itself through a specific person - and thus follow them - but it required the lightning to be quite a bit more powerful.

So instead of casting another spell, as I would have a few months earlier, I blocked his low kick with my cane, which was made of ironwood. It wouldn't break even if he'd hit it with a wrecking ball, and I snapped the cane in hard enough that it cracked loudly against his shin. He retaliated with a strike to my face, which I slapped aside with my free hand. Then we were right in it, and this was where he had taught me more about fighting with magic than any other teacher I'd ever had.

Hands and feet moved almost too quickly to follow, blows enhanced by force magic or crackling with electricity. I used a spell that boosted the speed and impact energy of a punch which he deflected aside with his hands and a small curved surface of invisible force. His fist came at me, suddenly sheathed in glistening ice, and I swatted it aside with the top of my cane, then used the momentum to spin the cane in a circle so that the other end of it only missed clipping his jaw because he lunged backwards away from me.

We started circling one another again. My right knee was beginning to ache…heck, my whole body was starting to ache. We'd been at this for two hours already without anything resembling a break except for me getting up after being thrown.

I eyed him warily, looking for an opening in his defenses while thinking about the idea he'd just given me. I'd never worked extensively with ice magic. It's not very destructive in the traditional sense, and it can be troublesome to call sufficient moisture to form enough ice for a spell.

But it had been raining a lot recently, and we were practicing outdoors that day. I had an idea.

Malone seemed to notice because his eyes lit up and he grinned. "Come on then, I see the cogs turning. Bring it, girl!"

I did. And while I was much more proficient in silent casting than I’d been a year earlier, this was new territory…to be safe, I decided to use a verbal focus. Which was one reason why I’d switched to Latin from Gaelic.

Gaelic is a beautiful language, and I love speaking it, but it’s not a fast language. For spellcasting, I was prepared to sacrifice elegance for speed.

I gathered Anima and channeled it into my cane, whipping it around and calling out, "Gelus!" There was a crackling sound as moisture condensed into a glaze of ice beneath his feet. A second cry of "Frigus celer!" resulted in me pelting him with rough balls of ice about the size of my fist.

The look of surprise on his face was incredibly satisfying.

He caught the first three balls of ice on a translucent blue Anima shield, and they were moving hard enough and fast enough that they shattered on impact and sprayed bits of ice everywhere. He took two steps back and I felt him call up fresh Anima, but the ice beneath him had finished congealing and his right foot slipped and almost shot out from under him, throwing off his balance and his concentration.

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The fourth ice ball broke through his shield and hit him in the stomach hard enough to double him up for a moment. The fifth caught him in the left shoulder, spinning him around, and the sixth caught him in the right hip, completing the spin and sending him face-first to the now-icy mats we'd laid on the ground.

There were a few ragged cheers from around us as Scotland Yard recruits (and officers) who'd come out to watch got back a little of their own. Most of them had been beaten up by Malone's training over the years just as surely as I was being.

Malone rose to his feet, shaking off a bit of water from the rapidly melting ice and grinning. "That was a wicked trick. I've never seen you use those spells before. New ones?"

"You gave me the idea when you threw that icy punch at me," I replied, returning his grin.

He nodded. "Good on you, girl. It's not everyone who faces me on these mats that can take me down like that. I wasn't prepared for those spells, and you pressed an advantage. Not to mention whipping out two new spells off the cuff like that. Well done."

I must've looked as startled as I felt, because he started laughing. "Praise where it's due, girl. You earned it. Now…can you do it again?"

I groaned and took up a defensive posture again as he started circling to his right. I moved with him, and we began again.

An hour later, I lay on the mats staring at the sky, out of breath and aching all over from a blast of force that had knocked me to my back. I groaned a little as Malone came to stand over me, grinning. "Gotcha." He held out his hand to me, and after a moment I grasped it and let him pull me to my feet.

"Mage Kinnear," he said in a formal but obviously pleased tone that I'd never heard from him before, "I believe you are one of the finest students I've ever had on these mats. You're a quick study, you've worked hard to improve both your physical and magical stamina, and you actually paid attention to most of the advice I've given you. Which is more than I can say for a lot of the cadets I train. You've done your teachers proud."

"Thank you, Sergeant," I replied, my spirits lifted by the unexpected praise. "I do my best."

He nodded. "Yes you do. Which is also more than I can say for a lot of the cadets I've trained." He flashed me a brief lopsided grin, which I returned tiredly before he continued, "Which is why I'm going to clear you for field consulting work. Well done." He offered me his hand again, this time to shake it.

I blinked in surprise, then smiled broadly and shook his hand warmly. "Thank you, sir!"

"Don't thank me," he shook his head. "You did the hard work, I just showed you what to do and how to do it. I wish we'd had a chance to do this before you went and got the crap beaten out of yourself. I think you could've taken that girl with what you've learned from me, or at least held her at bay. You're ready now, though."

I nodded my agreement. I'd thought myself well prepared for any duel - and really, in a formal duel with strict rules of conduct I probably would've been fine. But an all-out spell battle against a more experienced spellcaster without formal rules? I'd been in way over my head.

Now…now I'd learned to fight dirty myself.

"And," he went on, "you just remember everything old Sergeant Malone taught you when it's time for your Wizard's licensure exams…I hear they have a magical combat component that can be brutal. But after what I've taught you and some more practice, I think you'll lick it. If you ever need a sparring partner, you know where I am...in fact, I’d like it very much if you’d keep coming ‘round a couple of times a week. With a few more months of practice, you'll be a serious challenge, and I haven't had a challenge in a while."

I laughed. "I'll do that, Sergeant. Thank you."

The loud clash of steel on steel drew our attention, and we both turned to see Athena - in her usual reinforced leather bodysuit and detached leggings (her ‘work-clothes’) - locking blades with a young woman in a Scotland Yard trainee uniform. Both were breathing heavily, and the young woman was straining to keep Athena's shieldblade trapped between her two smallswords. She leaned forward into it, teeth bared, almost growling with the effort.

Athena, by comparison, barely looked like she was straining at all. Of course, she had the heavier blade in this confrontation, which gave her an edge (pardon the pun) at that moment.

Athena’s weapon of choice was a shieldblade, a new type of sword developed in Vinland, that was having trouble catching on, because only a few people - my Athena among them - had really figured out how to use it. It was a straight blade a little larger than a bastard sword, with a two-handed grip, a wedge-shaped tip...and one edge that was thicker and squared off. It made for a very strong sword, one which could be used as a blunt weapon as well as a hacking and slashing one, and it could even double as a shield if used properly.

Thus the name.

Athena had worked with a sword master to develop her own fighting style with it, and the one I’d purchased her was made of a new alloy called Vinderstál, developed in Vinland by Norden metalsmiths. It had magical properties that made it vastly lighter for its size and mass than normal steel, without sacrificing any of its durability or ability to hold an edge. I'd added a few enchantments to it, too. The end result was a blade that - in her hands - handled almost as easily as a smallsword and had an incredibly sharp edge that didn't dull.

Not that she sparred with it on the practice mats. She was currently using a blank - a heavier, blunt-edged version of the same type of sword.

As I watched, the young woman twisted away to her right, pulling her swords free and thrusting one of them at Athena's left leg.

With a speed that belied the size and weight of the blunted practice blade, Athena slapped the thrust aside and twirled her blade, catching her opponent's left wrist with the squared-off side of the shieldblade. The blow wasn't hard enough to do any real damage, though I suspected the girl would have a nasty bruise later…but it was more than enough to numb the girl's hand for a few moments. She cried out, and the smallsword in that hand clattered to the ground.

The girl reacted quickly, turning the right side of her body towards Athena and dancing back a couple of steps, holding her remaining smallsword in front of her and tipped towards Athena. "Yield?" the girl asked teasingly.

Athena grinned and settled into a ready stance, gripping her sword in both hands. "No. You?"

The girl, whose name I finally remembered was Abigail, shook her head. "I'm not giving up just yet."

They stood facing one another for a few moments longer, then lunged forward at the same time. On Abigail’s part, it was a tactical mistake. The greater reach of Athena’s shieldblade was a huge advantage.

Or at least, I thought it was. So did Athena. We were both mistaken.

Abigail twisted and dropped to her knees, causing Athena’s slashing swing to glide over the top of her head. A moment later, the tip of her smallsword was pressed to Athena’s stomach.

Athena grimaced and slowly lowered her blade, spreading her arms wide. “I yield.”

Abigail blew out a relieved breath and lowered her sword. “You almost had me. And I wouldn’t have been able to pull that move off on rough ground. I would’ve destroyed my knees.” She took Athena’s offered hand and rose slowly. “Ow. As it is, I’m gonna feel that in the morning.”

Athena shook her head ruefully. “I got cocky at the end there.”

“Yes, you did,” Sergeant Malone said as he walked over to them. “However, in a real fight you also wouldn’t have stopped to ask one another to yield. A formal duel, yes, but not an actual fight. I think that would’ve changed things.” He smiled. “I think you’re ready for field consulting too, Athena. Excellent work.”

Athena bowed politely, then shook Abigail’s hand and thanked her for her help as Malone returned to me. “You two are welcome here anytime. Stop by and beat the crap out of my cadets whenever you like.” He flashed a quick grin. “You might even learn something from them.”

I shook his hand warmly. “I was serious when I accepted your invitation to keep coming to train with you. I’ll see you in a few days.”